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Abstract
We examined the relation between previous motor and visual experience and current officiating experience of expert judges and referees and their judgments from an embodied cognition viewpoint. A total of 370 sports officials from soccer, handball, ice hockey, and trampoline took part in the study. Analyses revealed that cognitive judgments are related to motor, visual, and officiating experience to different degrees in the analyzed sports. Our findings indicate that, depending on the sport, sports officials should either specialize early in officiating, or gather visuo-motor experience as an athlete or spectator first, and then switch roles to become a sports official.
Acknowledgments
Alexandra Pizzera, German Sport University Cologne, Institute of Psychology; Markus Raab, German Sport University Cologne, Institute of Psychology.
We thank the German judging and referee boards of the sport associations in soccer, handball, ice hockey and trampoline, as well as the judges and referees who participated in the studies.
Notes
1. One study was conducted to examine the influence of the observed person's physical aspects (height) on perceptual judgments of referees (see van Quaquebeke & Giessner, Citation2010) rather than motor experience per se.